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In
the Kitchen with
At the Movies with
Seeking Health with
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2004 Icelandic Food & Fun Festival by Linda Joyce Forristal, CCP, MTA
From February 19-23, 2004 I attended the third annual Icelandic Food & Fun Festival in Reykjavik. The festival is designed to showcase two of the island’s best-known ingredients: lamb and fish. Gastronomic discovery and winter sports enticed internationally acclaimed chefs and food lovers to come to Iceland in the middle of winter. Visiting chefs competed in a cook-off for Chef of the Year, and were also paired with local host restaurants, where they prepared some of their signature dishes during the five-day event. At this year’s opening ceremonies at Iceland’s Culinary Institute, visiting chefs were matched to culinary students who acted as their assistants during the competition. The elaborate kick-off lunch buffet included some very traditional Icelandic offerings like fermented shark (that woke a few of us up after the overnight flight for the United States) that was served in a sherbet made with Black Death, an indigenous liquor. Thankfully, that dish was complemented with more savory fare and good desserts.
When we were not eating or cooking, we were out having fun. My group toured the Golden Circle, where we visited the original Geysir, the one for which all the other geysers in the world are named. We straddled the Mid-Atlantic Rift that runs through the island and snowmobiled in a surrealistic landscape filled with long northern shadows and skafrenningur, the Icelandic name for the kind of snow that slides on the surface when the wind blows. Other festival attendees had spas treatments, but almost everyone stopped for a dip in the waters of the Blue Lagoon—a geothermal hotspot that is ideally positioned about ten minutes from the airport.
A land of ice and snow (did you know Icelanders have more than fifty names for snow?), uniquely interspersed with warm geothermal spas and pools, Iceland is a compelling destination for all to explore—and its good food is just another reason make the effort. If you would like to attend next year’s event, I suggest you plan early. To attend the 2005 festival, watch for details to be posted at www.icelandair.com or http://icelandnaturally.com. I highly recommend staying at the beautiful Hotel Nordica, where I was surprised, and delighted, to see a neat little tray of small shot glasses and a bottle of Icelandic cod liver oil on the breakfast bar—for my morning dose of vitamins A and D and omega-3 fatty acids.
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We
found out that the competition was not only in the kitchen, but also involved
getting a reservation to one of the participating restaurants or tickets to the
culminating gala dinner prepared by Icelandic chefs. At the dinner, foreign
attendees were dubbed “lambassadors,” in the hopes we would go home and
spread a good word about Iceland and its offerings. Anybody who really knows me
can attest that I have not been a big fan of lamb, but I ate more of it while in
Iceland than every before. Somebody told me that Iceland’s sheep graze on
delectable items like blueberries, hence their sweeter taste. Well, from the
taste of things, they must be doing something right in the husbandry department. 
